


Titrations With Tantrums

by besidemethewholedamntime



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: A little fluffy, Academy Era, F/M, Friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-16
Updated: 2018-02-16
Packaged: 2019-03-19 15:06:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13706949
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/besidemethewholedamntime/pseuds/besidemethewholedamntime
Summary: "She can’t understand it at all, and this time she feels personally aggrieved by the solution’s utter reluctance to turn pink under Fitz’s direction. She watched him do everything. From the measuring to the mixing to the pouring. She watched it and analysed it and it was all correct."Fitz needs help with titrations and Jemma, being the ever eager friend, is more than willing to help. The titration, however, doesn't seem as willing to stick to the plan.





	Titrations With Tantrums

**Author's Note:**

> I've been writing this for a while but only just had the time to finish it because uni got crazy. I study Forensic Anthropology and not Chemistry so I apologise if this isn't completely accurate but I hope it's at least plausible? Also the prompt is from a post I found on tumblr a while back. I can't link it but if you want to see the full post I have a screenshot somewhere!  
> I hope you enjoy!

She prays it won’t happen but already knows it will. As soon as she turns the tap on the burette the solution in the conical flask turns a garish purple.  Sighing, she turns the tap the opposite way and slams the conical flask down on the counter with a little more force than is probably safe.

“Bright. Purple. _Again_ ,” she seethes, and turns to where Fitz is standing next to her, looking somewhat sheepish and afraid.

“I’m sorry, I really thought I had it this time.” He gives her a nervous cheeky smile and some of her anger and frustration evaporates off her.

“It’s fine,” Jemma says, faux-enthusiastically. “Completely fine. We’ll just have to start again, won’t we?” Lowering her voice she adds, “just like we’ve had to do for the past eight times.” A quick glance in his direction confirms Fitz hasn’t heard and with a little bit of her frustration vented off in the form of a snide remark she feels more than ready to continue with the titration.

“Remind me why we’re doing this again?” Fitz asks, as he rinses out the burette in the sink.

“ _Because,”_ she pauses as she measures out more acid, “you said you needed help in Chemistry. Specifically titrations. Which is basic Chemistry but then again you are an engineer and cannot be expected to know e _verything_ and you may understand the more complex concepts but many people have one or two simple techniques they cannot master. There really is no shame in it, Fitz.”

He blinks owlishly at her, the burette in his right hand dripping water onto the floor. “I never said I was ashamed,” he says slowly. Then, more indignantly, “you think I should be ashamed!”

“Ugh, of course not, Fitz. Didn’t I just say there was no shame in struggling with a simple titration?”

He narrows his eyes at her through his safety goggles. “If you really thought that you wouldn’t put the word ‘simple’ in front of the word ‘titration’.”

“Semantics,” Jemma shrugs. “You really are reading too much into this. Now, clamp the burette on the stand like so.” She tries to demonstrate but Fitz bats her hand away. She tries to ignore the way her stomach butterflies at his light touch.

“I know how to clamp a burette, Simmons. I watched you do it the last eight times we’ve done this.”

“Funny, because you think you would’ve picked up how to actually do it then!”

Jemma regrets the words as soon as they leave her mouth and she closes her eyes and counts to three, breathing deeply in time with her counting. She waits until the fire inside her has calmed and then opens her eyes, smiling apologetically at her best friend who currently looks as though she has slapped him. They jab at each other all of the time, but this time she feels as though she has touched a nerve that lies within him, dormant until the right words hit it in the right place.

“I’m sorry, Fitz. I shouldn’t have said that. I’m just…” she searches for the right adjective, “ _frustrated._ I just don’t understand what you don’t understand about this.”

Fitz’s stricken look disappears and he blows a breath through his funnelled lips. She can see that their little teaching session is taking a toll on him too. They’ve been here a good two hours now, and are still no closer to getting Fitz to understand titration. She believes he understands the theory but cannot quite translate it to the physical technique. This is what confuses _her_ in turn because Fitz is an engineer and builds magnificent things from the depths of genius in his mind. It is usually her that struggles more with the physical technique.

“I’m sorry,” he mumbles, looking down at the floor and scuffing the water drips with his foot. Jemma wants to reprimand him, tell him to stop before he slips and hurts himself or spills some acid but her breath is caught in her throat. He looks so much like a child, apologising for not understanding, for being _stupid._ It hurts her. Fitz is the smartest man she knows and yet here he is like a child in front of her, acting like he is stupid.

Jemma Simmons is going to be dammed if she allows Leopold Fitz to feel stupid. Not while she is by his side.

“Don’t be _sorry._ It’s why we’re here, isn’t it? I’m going to teach you.” She moves over to the burette, and pours into the top until the meniscus sits at the thirty-centimetre line. Looking back at Fitz, Jemma sees that he is concentrating fully on her movements, mentally committing each move to memory. Feeling pleased, she continues with the titration until finished, her solution a delicate pink.

“Now,” she says, turning towards him with a genuinely enthused smile. “You try.”

She takes a step back, optimistic about Fitz’s chances of success this time. Critically analysing his work as he cleans out the equipment and then sets it up again, Jemma notes that he appears to do everything right. She doesn’t even realise she is holding her breath and he begins to turn the tap…

Bright. Freaking. Purple.

She can’t understand it at all, and this time she feels personally aggrieved by the solution’s utter reluctance to turn pink under Fitz’s direction. She _watched_ him do _everything._ From the measuring to the mixing to the pouring. She watched it and analysed it and it was all _correct._ Damn, it’s been a long day. Jemma needs some dinner and a nice scientific paper about antibiotic resistance in the 21st century or something else that isn’t as complicated as basic titrations.

She doesn’t communicate this to Fitz, however, and instead just smiles, albeit a little tightly, and claps her hands together. “It’s okay, Fitz. We’ll get there eventually.”

“It’s fine, Simmons,” Fitz says dejectedly, snapping his nitrile gloves off and putting them in the waste bin.

“ _No,_ ” she says determinedly. “We are not giving up. _I_ am not giving up. We shall stay here all night if we have to: you are going to get titrations if it kills me.”

At this point she thinks it might _literally_ kill her, but Jemma is no quitter and she is not about to let this best her. She fishes out more gloves from the box at the end of the bench and hands them to Fitz. He makes no move to take them, just stares at them as they dangle limply from her fingers. She shakes her hands at him.

“ _Fitz_ ,” she encourages. “Go on, take them. Lab protocol says you must wear gloves at all times.”

“We really aren’t going to stay here all night, are we? I have another project to be working on, you know.”

His reluctance irks Jemma, because it’s no longer just about titrations. It’s about not letting him give up. It’s about not letting him think that there’s something he can’t do, that his genius has limits. Fitz’s mind knows no boundaries and she will not let him think that he has found one.

And it’s also a little bit about her. Just a smidge. Because she wants to know why it isn’t working for him and yet works for her even though he’s copying her exact steps. But it is most definitely mostly about Fitz.

“I know you do,” she says firmly, “but I also know that you are a month ahead with that project. You _can_ do this, Fitz. I believe you can.”

The corners of his mouth tick upwards in a smile, and Jemma feels her heart soar a little bit. “Okay,” he says. “We’ll figure it out.”

“Yes.” She nods determinedly. “We will.”

They do try to figure it out. They give it one-hundred percent. Jemma watches Fitz like a hawk. He does everything perfectly.

And yet the solution still turns bright purple.

They are on their fourteenth titration when Jemma notices something about the measuring cylinder Fitz is using. She thought they’d been using the same one, but when he goes to rinse it out she notices that the measurement marks on this one are blue, and the ones on the one she had been using are black. A barely distinguishable difference that shouldn’t matter and yet something about causes a tug on a thread in Jemma’s mind.

Fitz is just going to measure again with it when she yells, rather dramatically, “Stop!”

He jumps and although he doesn’t drop the measuring cylinder, he fumbles with it and it clunks onto the workbench. “Geez, Simmons! What is it?”

“Sorry,” she apologises. “I didn’t mean to shout that quite so dramatically. It’s just that measuring cylinder…”

“What? This one? What about it?”

Jemma keeps pulling on the thread in her mind and finally it releases, enlightening her. “Did they not recall the ones that have the blue measurement lines? Something about the accuracy being off?”

Fitz’s face brightens as understanding dawns on him. “Yeah! They sent an email telling us we should only use the ones with the black marks, and we were all paranoid for ages; constantly holding them up to the light to make sure the marks were black.” Then he frowns and scratches his head. Jemma resists the urge to reprimand him for doing so with gloves on. “But that was ages ago. I thought they got rid of them.”

It’s Jemma’s turn to look sheepish, and she looks down at the floor before looking into Fitz’s face again, his eyebrow raised in question.

“You see,” she laughs awkwardly, “in order for us to use the lab at this time, and use supplies, I had to promise the professor that I wouldn’t use anything scheduled for actual classes so in case something happened that nothing would be affected. So, I had to go digging in the back of the supply cupboards and those were the only two there.” She laughs again. “It’s really quite funny, if you think about it.”

She doesn’t expect Fitz to laugh, so it’s a surprise when he begins to, and beams at her at the same time. He begins to laugh harder, and she has to join in even though she doesn’t quite understand what’s so funny.

He finally stops long enough to catch his breath, and wipes his eyes with the sleeve of his shirt. “So you’re telling me that we’ve been here for _hours_ and the only reason is that we were both using different measuring cylinders.”

Jemma has to admit that it is funny when she thinks about it like that.

“I guess we can go now then,” Fitz sighs with relief, snapping of his gloves with a certain relish on his face. He gently begins to pack up all of the equipment, but pauses when Jemma isn’t right there helping him, and telling him to remember to close the tap on the burette.

“What’s up, Simmons?” He narrows his eyes at her. She feels herself growing flustered under his scrutiny.

“N-nothing,” she stammers out.

Fitz rolls his eyes. “You want me to try it again with the right measuring cylinder, don’t you?”

“Well, I mean if you want to. It would be the proper way to confirm that you really have learnt how to do titrations, Fitz.” Then she realises that this isn’t about her and feels a bit embarrassed. “Though I expect you have got it. We can just go. Get a late dinner or something.”

He smiles at her, then, with such warmth it’s like feeling the summer sun on her face. “No, you’re right.” He begins to unpack the equipment. “We can’t just ignore how to do science, Simmons. Have to make sure that I properly learnt how to do it and all.”

He snaps on a pair of gloves and hands a set to her.

“Well come on, Dr. Dr. Simmons. Let’s do this together one last time shall we?”

Jemma accepts the gloves with a laugh and smiles at him. Fitz is many things: he’s grumpy and messy and grumbles all of the time, but he’s incredibly smart and sweet and is so interesting that she could talk with him for hours and never get tired of him.

“Yes, Dr Fitz. Let’s do it. Together.”

Fitz is many things, but out of all of them, her favourite thing is that she can call him her best friend.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you liked that. Feel free to kudo/comment. Feel free not to. Either way, I hope you have a wonderful day!


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